A hard-disk drive (HDD) is a non-volatile storage device that is housed in a protective enclosure and stores digitally encoded information on at least one circular disk having magnetic surfaces. When an HDD is in operation, each magnetic-recording disk is rapidly rotated by a spindle system. Information is read from and written to a magnetic-recording disk using a read-write head that is positioned over a specific location of a disk by an actuator. A read-write head uses a magnetic field to read information from and write information to the surface of a magnetic-recording disk. A write head makes use of the electricity flowing through a coil, which produces a magnetic field. Electrical pulses are sent to the write head, with different patterns of positive and negative currents. The current in the coil of the write head induces a magnetic field across the gap between the head and the magnetic disk, which in turn magnetizes a small area on the recording medium.
An HDD includes at least one head gimbal assembly (HGA) that typically includes a slider housing a read/write head (also referred to as a “head slider”), a lead suspension with which the head slider is coupled, and a load beam with which the suspension is coupled. The head slider is attached at the distal end of the load beam to a gimbal mechanism. Typically, the head slider is electrically interconnected to the lead suspension via connection pads on the respective components, which are solder ball bonded together to form the final electrical interconnection between the components. One solder ball bonding procedure places a solder ball between the connection pad of the head slider and the connection pad of the suspension, reflows the solder ball by using laser light, and electrically interconnects the connection pad of the head slider and the connection pad of the suspension.
One particular approach to solder ball bonding very small components, such as a head slider to a suspension, is through use of a solder ball bonding (SBB) tool that includes a solder ball reservoir or tank in positional relation to a rotatable feed plate. A supply of solder balls (or “micro solder balls”) is housed in the reservoir, from which solder balls are fed one-by-one to the rotatable feed plate. The feed plate then rotates into one or more other process positions for enabling irradiation of and ejection of solder balls onto the workpieces to be interconnected, such as the head slider and the suspension. However, such SBB tools may tend to clog, whereby a solder ball may be inadvertently captured or lodged between the reservoir and the feed plate and consequently deformed, possibly causing a number of malfunctions of the SBB tool and associated bonding process.
Any approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.